What Varric Unintentionally Started
by A-Dream's-Nightmare
Summary: A response to a challenge on TheAuthorExchange. Hawke and Fenris find one of Varric's rough drafts, and it gives Hawke an idea...


**A/N: okay, so this is something new for me. As some of you may know, I no longer have a laptop due to my daughter accidentally breaking it. So I've had to come up with creative ways to post my story. When lo and behold, I found a snazzy little thing on my phone that records my voice and turns every word into text. You heard me, every single word of this chapter, I spoke out loud and read out loud, and my phone wrote it down for me. I'm so giddy right now, you have no idea. **

**On another note, this chapter and succeeding chapters on response to challenge posted on TheAuthorExchange. I do not have the link for it because my phone is evil and won't let me edit my bio, but it's quite easy to find or go to Hatseput's bio, to whom I owe thanks for leading me to it. It's a wonderful forum created for well written authors and editors who just want to be recognized for their talents. There are challenges posted and this story is entered for one of those challenges. The challenge is that Hawke finds Varric's writings and learns something new, and must act on it. I hope you all enjoy reading this as much as I had fun reading it out loud. Lol**

She didn't mean to snoop. In all honesty, she really didn't intend to pick up that stack of papers and shove them into her sack, along with the other knickknacks and thingamajigs she picked up on her travels. It was a force of habit, and it wasn't until later in hindsight that she remembered picking them up.

She had learned a long time ago that the random papers that she found lying all over Thedas always had the most interesting things to read. Mostly it was lost pages of history books, a journal entry torn out and thrown to the wind, a poster fallen off it's hanging, or a notice that went ignored for days. She'd read through each and every single one, drink and any bit of knowledge they provided her. Then she lovingly give it it's very own place and her own growing journal, filled with other pages of it's kind.

Now that she thought about it,the 'Codex' as she had come to know if by was getting rather thick. It's leather bindings were stretched almost to their maximum capacity, and weighing it in the palm of her hand, Hawke judged that she'd need to get it rebound soon.

It was nighttime outside her window when she finally sat down at her desk to rifle through her daytime sack. A few common things fell out right away: another worn out bracelet, a few silver coins, an embroidered hat (she should probably find the owner), and of course… _Papers_.

"What have you found today, Hawke?" a deep voice spoke upon opening the door to her room. She looked up with a smile at the sound of that growly voice she loved so much, and the elf attached to it. Fenris never bothered to knock before entering her room, not after she pretty much yelled at him for doing it. (_"It's your home too, Fenris. You don't need to knock on your own door." "_I don't live here. What are you going on about?" _She just waved a hand, brushing his comment to side."Well,consider this your second home. So treat it like yours." _He had to bite his tongue to stop himself from sarcastically asking if he could put dead bodies in the foyer of this home too.)

"Stuff, Fenris!" She smiled brightly and finished dumping out the contents of her sack. He didn't necessarily laugh at her as he leaned against the desk, but the smirk on his face was particularly wide as he watched her sort through her 'treasures'. "You, _amore, _are a pack rat," he told her. She ignored him, instead looking at a shiny bobble she found in Hightown that she found pretty. Absentmindedly, she placed it with the other shiny objects she found on the shelf above her desk, and went onto the papers.

"I wonder what this is, "she mused, picking up the stack of papers she found on a table in the Hanged Man. Now that she thought back to it, it had been sitting on an empty table by the bar, with no one around it.

"Looks like one of the abomination's manifestoes, "Fenris commented, his smirk turning into a scowl at the mere thought of Anders. Used to his tirade about the mage. Hawke waved her hand nonchalantly.

"No, we usually find those tucked in between pages in the library, "she reminded him, "I found these in the Hanged Man. "

"The Hanged Man?" A dark eyebrow nearly rose into his silver hairline. "The only person there who can even _write_ is…" Leaning forward, he flipped the bottom right corners of the papers, looking for the last page. And that's when he found it: a signature at the very end of the writings.

"Var-ric," he read out loud, and Hawke felt her cheeks call go red in pride. The smile that nearly split her face into made her cheeks hurt, but she didn't care. She still felt giddy every time Fenris decided to take the initiative to practice is reading. (For the longest time, he had been embarrassed when she would stare happily at him every time he picked a book out of the library. He eventually had to accept her eccentricities.)

This time, she grinned at the papers. "Ooooh, more friend fiction? " she guessed, "Do you think it's another sequel to 'Hard in Hightown'?"

As soon as she suggested it, Fenris promptly walked away. "I have no interest in Aveline and Donnic's next sex life, or Varric's interpretation of it, "he called out behind them.

"Your loss! "She yelled to his receding back, but still smiled when he headed for the library. Giggling, she briefly wondered how long it would take him to realize she had all of Varric's books in there, including the 'Hard in Hightown' and 'Hard in Hightown: Siege Harder' series.

Gathering the rough draft and her hands, she followed after him, intending to read it by the fireside in the library.

...

Turns out, while it was a sequel to 'Hard in Hightown', it was not about Aveline and Donnic. Or any of the City Guards, or even the Templars that Varric sometimes took the liberty of writing about. No, it was something that surprised her even more.

As she read on, she couldn't tear her eyes away, reading every page front and back. Her eyes were wide with shock at first. And then they narrowed in thought, until they widened again filled with hope.

"Fenris..." she called out to her lyrium elf upon reaching the end of Varric's rough draft. He glanced up from his 'Book of Shartan'. He frowned, "I am _not_ reading it, Hawke," he scowled at her.

"That's not it, "she frowned, her mind still trying to process what she'd just learned.

"Then what?"

She hummed in thought momentarily, then asked, "During your Diamondback games, when it's just you and the men… Do you guys… _talk_ at all?"

Fenris gazed at her, one of his eyebrows rising in confusion. "We are friends," he reminded her, "Of course we talk. Did you think we just sat around the table, staring at our cards?"

'_Cheeky elf_,' she thought snarklily, but out loud she continued, "I'm just wondering if you guys ever talk about...women. Like, who likes who and such."

Ater that, he put his book down, but not before carefully marking his page. "Hawke, what is this about?" he warily asked her, a large part of him not sure if he really wanted to hear the answer. However, he had to admit: he was curious. It was an odd question, even for her.

Luckily, she hated beating around the bush just as much as him. "Does Sebastian like Bethany?"

Ah, so Varric's writing had been about Sebastian and Bethany. Knowing how Varric wrote (Thank the Maker _nothing_ like Isabela and her… Scandalous writings) ,Fenris knew it was most likely a love story. Albeit, it would be an interesting one, given that Bethany was confined to the Circle.

"He does… speak of her often," he spoke slowly," I've heard him a couple times say how he wished he had more opportunities to visit with her."

"Varric says the same thing!" she exclaimed and held the papers up, "He writes how it breaks Sebastian's heart because he is separated from Bethany. That his heart _aches_ to be with her."

Fenris made a face. "I did not need to hear that."

She continued on, ignoring him. "This is perfect!" she threw her hands up in the air triumphantly, "Bethany has been pining for him ever since she met him years ago, but he's so… chaste, that we were never sure if he even liked her back."

"You know what we have to do, Fenris?" Her happy childlike grin was back and Fenris knew what that meant.

"No," he uttered simply and return to his book, "I will not be a part of your shenanigans."

"We're gonna play matchmaker!" she cheered.

He sighed. Tomorrow, he'd have to go get Varric and Isabela. Let _them_ be a part of Hawke's eccentric plan and leave _him_ out of it.


End file.
